I’m confused. Are you saying that South Carolina is full of smart kids or dumb kids?
I feel exactly the opposite. I’m fine with the prison sentence. But I believe that anyone who is in the country as a legal permanent resident or has lived in the country for a substantial period of time should never be subjected to deportation.
Now this kind of comment pisses me off. He isn’t an American citizen, but he’s anything but a “visitor in our country.” He’s a full-time legal resident, he has lived here for a substantial period of his life, and he has spent the bulk of his formative years here. He’s an American, even if not a citizen. He’s our problem to deal with, not to push off because of mere paper status.
actually, I would beg to differ. He is not an American. He has PR and for whatever reason has not converted that into citizenship. He’s 19 so there has been time since becoming an adult to make changes.
I simply don’t agree. Permanent residents aren’t citizens, but they are Americans. Once someone has established a substantial life in a country, he or she should never be subject to deportation, regardless of paper status.
I was a permanent resident for 9 years, but I never thought of myself as an American. I was an Australian living in the U.S. (However, a person living in the U.S. from the age of 3 might think differently, of course.)
I understand both sides of this argument, so I’m not sticking solidly to one position or the other. This kid needs to be punished for his actions, but within limits. So I’d have to say both deportation and a long sentence are overly harsh. The dumbass should have taken the plea deal and spared us all the trouble of debating this.
I just read the article, which you can find here. It really is very judicious and thoughtful.
Taking the whole story, this guy’s actions seem, to me at least, more those of a thoughtless, self-centered attention seeker than a bullying homophobe. He acted like an asshole, and he also displays the same sort of casual homophobia that is common among teenagers (use of “fag” as a general epithet; getting grossed out by mentions of gay sex), but i’m not sure i would consider it justice if he received a long prison sentence.
The problem with cases like this is that there is no really neat way to fit the sadness and the outrage caused by this incident into the boxes offered by the criminal justice system. On the one hand, Ravi definitely violated Clementi’s privacy, and it also seems, at some level, like Ravi is partly responsible for Clementi’s death, and our sense of justice demands that his behavior be punished in some way. On the other hand, he didn’t “out” Clementi (Clementi hadn’t really made a secret of his sexuality), the story suggests that the most explicit thing seen by viewers of the webcam was two shirtless guys kissing, and he certainly didn’t kill Clementi. As the author of the New Yorker piece writes:
I’m not even sure anymore what i would consider a fair outcome. Clementi’s parents have said that they want justice, but that they are not necessarily seeking a harsh punishment. Also, despite the fact that i think anti-gay bullying is an incredibly serious problem and should be fought on all possible fronts, i’m not sure that this case deserves to be held up as the epitome of modern homophobia.
Anyway, i highly recommend the New Yorker article.
Note too that Clementi had casually thrown around some Indian stereotypes in emails mentioning Davi. These were both teenagers adjusting to a larger world.
“Justice” may be a complicated thing for Clementi’s parents. Clementi felt rejected by his mother because he was gay, and it’s hard not to wonder whether that contributed to his suicide as much as or more than Ravi’s actions.
Yeah, that stood out to me, too. Ravi’s definitely an over-confident attention-seeker, and someone who takes pleasure in knocking anyone who isn’t like him. Then again, if that were a crime we’d have to lock up half of the country’s college freshmen.
I’m not really convinced that this had much to do with it. After Clementi wrote that message about feeling rejected, he and his mother spent the rest of the week together as she helped him prepare for college, and had plans for the Parent and Family Weekend. It seems to me, based on the description of events, that if she was less than receptive when he came out to her, it was more because she was hurt that he had not told her before, and disappointed that she might not have grandkids in the “traditional” way.
Anyway, the fact that Clementi might have bought into some stereotypes about Indian immigrants, or the fact that his mother mightn’t have been completely accepting of his homosexuality isn’t really relevant, in my opinion. Ravi wasn’t on trial for sending text messages about his gay roommate, and he wasn’t on trial for murder. He was on trial for the things he did related to the computer and the spying. I’m not sure that i think the bias and hate crime attachments to the charges were completely warranted, but the invasion of privacy stuff is enough, by itself, for me to believe that he deserves some sort of sentence.
Yeah, and I like the idea that people in general—who have more and more access to intrusive technologies—might understand that they can go to prison for spying.
The mother didn’t have the most supportive reaction to his coming out, but she didn’t disown or reject him and it sounds like their relationship was OK in the months between that event and his suicide. It’s hard to see that as an immediate cause. And Ravi’s actions certainly caused him to feel singled out, but it’s hard to say why that helped lead to the suicide. Maybe he did feel that they were connected. It’s sad and confusing.
He’s enough of a dick that you can believe he might’ve done it anyway, but in the context of his messages to friends and such, it’s easy to come to the conclusion that he was spying on his roommate because he was gay- not because he hated gays, but because the idea of sharing a room with a gay guy who was getting busy was new and different and weirded him out. That doesn’t necessarily bring it up to what people think of as a hate crime, but it does make it an action that was taken because Clementi was gay and one that would’ve made him feel discriminated against.
These are some of the problems that make this case so difficult to consider. I’m horrified that someone could potentially spend 10 years in prison for this activity, that someone who is not homophobic can commit a hate crime against a gay person, and what in all other cases I’ve heard about would be considered a civil infraction not a criminal one.
At the same time I’m horrified that the we have someone in college carrying out this kind of activity and then worse attempting a coverup of a legal investigation into it. All from someone who should have known his status as a non-citizen left him in a precarious position.
Then I’m delighted to see that someone who appears to be unrepentent to me is getting punished for activity which is clearly wrong. And that the law actually has a means of dealing with such activities.
Then I get horrified by the results because I could see an over zealous prosecutor persecuting someone who could be far less culpable in such an act.
I have a great deal of sympathy for the jury and how they’ve had to make these decisions.
I’ll sum up by repeating the one thing for which there is no doubt: This kid was a dumbass. The ultimate proof of that was his refusal of a plea bargain.
I doubt that Ravi would be charged with anything if Clementi hadn’t committed suicide. If he was alive, we wouldn’t be talking about this because no one would know about it except a few students at Rutgers.
I’m assuming he doesn’t want to be deported, right? Since he’s lived here since he was a toddler.
Well then, as soon as he hit eighteen he should have started whatever the process is to become an American citizen. Tough, I hope they deport him, even if he doesn’t really know the country he originated in.
I once knew a guy who was twenty-five, and had been in the United States since he was five. He was in grad school, and never planned to go back to Germany. But he’d not yet become a citizen because “the paperwork is so much trouble” Bull, it’s an HONOR to become a citizen of this country(or anywhere where one intends to stay) Don’t give me any of that crap about how it’s too much trouble.
I record people and their actions for a living. What this person did was a violation of privacy, something I believe everyone should hold dear. Just as I believe in the First Amendment and our right and responsibility to record our Public events, I also believe every one of us needs to understand the line which we should not cross, where every human should expect their private lives to remain so. And I don’t think the concept is all that difficult to understand.
Ravi’s actions were that of a self absorbed, uncaring person. I have no issue with him paying a steep penalty for being inhuman, within the confines of established law.
Is it possible- and if it is possible, is it likely- for somebody to be offered a plea deal between conviction and appeal?
Nobody’s interest is really served by this guy doing several years in prison, and deporting somebody who has lived here almost all of his life sounds like something J. Edgar Hoover would have done in the 1920s. I’m guessing at this point, however, he’d take 2,000 hours of community service plus court costs and maybe a month in jail or whatever.
The worst accounts of Ravi imply he’s a spoiled rich asshole. I really really really hate spoiled rich assholes, they’re somewhere between Illinois Nazis and Dittoheads on my list of dislikes (and that’s not discounting that one person can be all three of those), but I don’t think they should go to prison.
Also, as a gay man I’m actually afraid of what extending his sentence for ‘bias’ could do for gay rights. Try him for what he did, not why he did it. I wish the prosecutor himself would drop the bias components.
No, it’s not possible. A plea deal is an arrangement worked out between the prosecutor and the defendant based on the defendant’s agreement to plead guilty. The only motivation for the prosecutor is to get the cooperation of the defendant and to avoid a trial. Once the trial is over, there is absolutely no scope for a plea bargain.
(Furthermore, when a defendant pleads guilty, the sentencing is in the hands of the judge, not the prosecutor. The judge is not required to honor the agreement at all. A prosecutor and a judge are in two separate branches of government; they have no authority over each other.)
Once a guilty verdict has been issued by a jury, that’s it. The defendant is guilty. The prosecution has nothing to offer at that point and there’s nothing more that the defendant can give the prosecution.
(Of course, if the judge declares a mistrial, then you’re back at square one and you could go back to plea bargaining.)
I’m not arguing with** Acsenray **about this, because I don’t really know. But a legal analyst mentioned on the TV yesterday that in some circumstances a judge would determine the sentence based on the plea bargain. She then mentioned that this did not seem likely in this case. She also mentioned this particular judge’s reputation regarding sentencing, and she thought there was little doubt he would now serve time.
However, it does seem a judge in many cases could determine the sentence to be the same as the terms as in a plea deal. But unless a judge was willing to set aside a verdict, I don’t see how the crime itself could be downgraded to a lesser offense once the verdict comes in.
I don’t think there’s any conflict between what I wrote and what you wrote. In most cases, the judge does go along with the plea bargain. If it weren’t so, no defendant would accept such a deal. My parenthetical point was just that the judge doesn’t have to honor the terms of the plea bargain.